Some years ago I came across the expression about looking for the golden nuggets in each day. This made me think and I resolved to try and find for myself nuggets in my daily life. I realised that as I walked down my street each day to reach the bus stop to go to work I was hurrying along never really noticing anything. I still remember my very first nugget. It was a blackbird sitting on a branch of a tree. The branch, which was covered with pink blossom and an adjoining branch, formed an arch around his little body. I saw the beautiful pink blossoms, his black feathers and his brilliant yellow beak. What a lovely picture! How I wished I had a camera to capture that moment in time. Like Wordsworth’s daffodils, I still carry that lovely image in my memory.

This occurence made me realise that I was walking through life with my eyes closed to my surroundings. I did notice the flowers in the well-kept gardens but I missed the lonely little wild flower that had crept its way through a crevice in a stone wall, I missed the raindrop trembling on the leaf of a tree, the cat sitting on the windowsill watching the world go by, the busy bee with it’s lovely “fur” coat meticulously examining each flower and the butterflies whose beauty enhances our gardens. In other words, I was missing the beauty of God’s world and I had to make more time to “Stand and Stare.”

Another “nugget” I will never forget was the sight of a mother sparrow feeding one of her little ones one summer evening right beneath my window. The little fledgling opening his/her mouth while Mum carefully dropped into it some food she had carefully collected for the purpose. What a picture of mother love and trusting child.

One often hears the phrase to “see through the eyes of a child” and I do believe that as children we did notice things more. Take a child on a walk and you are slowed down as they insist on examining and looking at everything along the way.Taken on a train or bus journey years ago children spent the time with their faces pressed against the windows watching everything that passed. I recently saw a small child in a pram watching a film on an Ipad whilst on a bus journey! Commuters these days are so glued to their mobile phones on the buses, reading text messages, looking up the internet, reading their kindles that they are missing out on the beauty and interest of their everyday world. They no longer look out of windows at the passing scenes or see their fellow travellers. They miss the sight of the sleeping baby in mother’s arms, the guide dog leading his master or mistress on and off the bus, the cat in a cat basket complaining bitterly about being taken to the vet. This is life and we should take note of it! Are we so busy complaining about the rain that we miss the rainbow? Is the snowfall so awful that we do not see the beauty in a snowflake. Look at your windows on a cold frosty day and discover Jack Frost’s fingers and for myself I am lost in admiration of a spider’s web which often excels the most beautiful crochet. This is God’s world and we are priveged to be a part of it. We are grateful to our artists and photographers who can capture for us these moments of beauty which we have overlooked in our busy lives.

The hymn writer Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander composed that lovely children’s hymn “All things Bright and Beautiful” which expresses so beautifully what I have tried to write.

“Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings.
He made their glowing colours
He made their tiny wings.”

“He gave us eyes to see them
And lips that we might tell
How great is God almighty
Who has made all things well.”

Let us resolve to be more appreciative of the beauty of our world and never, never to destroy or harm the work of our creator.